BERLIN (AP) — Vandals set hearth to a mouse statue that is a TV star and mascot for youngsters’s programming at German broadcaster WDR, the tv station mentioned Saturday.
The cartoon mouse, recognized solely as “Die Maus,” is the eponymous star of “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (The Present with the Mouse) because it first aired in West Germany in 1971. Every brief episode options different languages and academic segments.
The statue — that includes the character’s well-known orange physique with brown ears, legs and arms — greets households and youngsters outdoors a media constructing in Cologne, Germany.
A receptionist for WDR noticed a number of younger individuals standing across the statue in Cologne on a digital camera feed in a single day Friday into Saturday. She then seen flames and known as the fireplace division, WDR mentioned.
The hearth blackened components of the mouse’s face and arm, photos present. The station mentioned a police grievance had been filed in opposition to an unidentified individual.
Matthias Körnich, head of kids’s programming for WDR, mentioned it is not only a figurine that was broken.
“A piece of childhood, a symbol of joy and togetherness has been attacked,” he mentioned. “The mouse belongs to Cologne.”
The mouse statue is not the primary German TV character to be attacked.
In 2009, the statue of a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) was stolen from his conventional place outdoors the city corridor in Erfurt, the place German youngsters’s public tv channel KiKA is predicated.
Bernd, a cult traditional in Germany, was held hostage for almost two weeks earlier than being found unhurt in an deserted barracks.
